This somehow ended up on HBO, but after investigating, since they are a distribution company, it's perfectly normal for this to happen.
The description lends to the idea that we are all entagled with nature. Which is true. However that is not what the entanglement meant here. I think it's important to note, and you will see for yourself if you watch it that " the richest person in America" who owns the biggest logging company that is taking our thousand year old trees down in a heartbeat, paid for this documentary. If he didn't then the company definately paid the director.
Everything seems to take place in the Southwest, and you meet a few different characters and they're the actual entanglements. Some of them talk about their relationship to trees and their stories are real and heartfelt. But not too many. The photographer, the mother who saves trees by cutting ivy off of trunks that are eating and feeding off trees was amazing. However the bonzai guy Ryan Neil, whos name shojdl not get any publicity from this review, not does he deserve any, basically self advertises that this "talent" was immaculately conceived! He spent years in Japan feeling rejected by his mentor who must have caught on that he was mutilating a very old Japanese tradition by using drills and power tools to cheat creation of what he comes bonzai's.
In the end apparently someone catches on this type of malpractice on trees and breaks into his yard and brakes his prize bonsai trees, then undresses and leaves his property after smashing his interior home up.
And then entering my stage left is this wealthy logging company president who it's cutting down every single good tree. But he makes a point of going on and on about how his company has now planted 2 million single trees since cutting them all down. But what he fails to mention is that he's already destroyed the ecosystem where these trees grew. And there's no going back because every 30 years he goes back to those same sites and cuss those same trees down again and does it all over.
Throughout the movie this guy is speeches are being played and then they show him as a really old guy which really doesn't elicit much emotion for me as a spectator or viewer. After a while it became painfully evident that this was a giant advertisement to show that parts of his company are operating not just in the green for financial but to make it look like they really care about trees not as a crop but as a part of this world.
But they're treating trees like crops which is obvious by the actions. They're charming black and white photos and old film of loggers working together chopping down trees that look like they're about 20 ft wide at the bottom. And I understand that this is just an industry. But it's not a documentary about the intertwining relationships between people and their trees and the love they have for nature. Not at all this is not what that film is. It's just a paid advertisement so they could write off a certain amount of money towards some kind of renewal benefit with their tax people.
Some of the more beautiful shots are of the Joshua tree that you see in this film with this incredible photographer using an old camera and taking 10 shots of this beautiful tree over the course of the day. And then developing them using platinum process. This was amazing
Unfortunately the movie itself is not worth a look once you get halfway through you're invested and you're not sure what to do but let me save you the time you should watch one of those Morgan Freeman voice overs of nature. Or the UK documentaries. Those things are on point. Nature doesn't lie, people do and that's one thing you need to understand there's always an angle. I'd much rather watch a fictional movie then be told something's the truth.
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